


Day in the Life of Sollux

by Electrum (orphan_account)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Pre-Sburb/Sgrub
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-16
Updated: 2012-12-16
Packaged: 2017-11-21 06:35:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/594583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Electrum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A writing exporation about a day in the life of Sollux before the game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day in the Life of Sollux

You are Sollux Captor and you are currently engrossed in a coding project. It's not your usual type of work, but it's proving to be oddly challenging. You code around the difficulties but as time passes, you consider that you may have made a mistake in the early stages. Of course, you are supposed to be an excellent programmer. So excellent that you don't make mistakes. But that's just what you want your friends to think. At least none of them understand code well enough to know the truth. You're far above the average, but it's impossible to be perfect. 

You look at how many lines you've already written. Too many. Shit. Where's the fucking mistake. It's obviously there somewhere. It would probably be best to go through each line top to bottom, but you haven't had much sleep in days. You bury your forehead in your hands. Maybe you need to take a break. Before you wanted to get the code straight from your mind and onto the screen before your memory fucked it up, but now you know that it already has. Yeah, it'll probably be best to clear your mind before looking for that logic error. Which you are completely certain is something extremely basic and fucking stupid. Maybe you switched a variable name like a moron. Maybe you kept switching a variable name like an absolute imbecile. Or maybe you just designed a loop wrong. You're not going to figure it out like this because your too distracted with insulting your own intelligence.

You think you've engaged in enough self-deprecating. Maybe you should go get some food and check out who's been trolling you. God knows how long you've been ignoring your friends. Was it two days? Actually, you are almost certain it was two days. How appropriate. You smile to yourself. You know that there's an unfinished plate of food somewhere around the hive from yesterday, but that doesn't seem appetizing or sanitary. You think that a plate of frozen food is probably going to be the easiest thing to grab.

You move it over to get cooked using your psionics. While waiting you check to see who has messaged you. Just the usual... AA messaging you about some stuff relevant to the game you're going to play. You think it's almost complete, but you can't be completely certain at this point. She seems to have found another ruin depicting some of the instructions. 

You feel pretty lucky to know her. Not everyone gets a chance to play a game that will let them save the world and become a hero. You know that things will be going to shit because of your accurate, yet rare visions. You've seen things that have come to pass before, so you know that the apocalypse will happen. You knew about AA's death... well, more of a transformation into a spirit? Then again, what do you know about the specifics. All you know is that you saw yourself killing her and refused to believe it would actually come to pass. You were a complete imbecile for not believing it. At least she didn't die completely. If that happened you're not sure what you would have done.

You've also seen your future deaths, but you think that you might be okay with them if you can become a hero. On the other hand, you really don't want to die, but AA seems to think it's going to be ok. Overall you just aren't entirely sure what to think except that it's better to die as a hero. It really depends on the day. Some days you just want to go trying to prevent it from ever happening, but you know what kind of future is in store for you if it doesn't happen. So really, there's no winning situation in the end is there?

TZ messaging you about some shit, you think there may have been some drama going on. Who does she think you are? Her moirail? Eheheh, that was a good joke. But really, you know her message is a ploy for finding out how far along that game is coming. She probably thinks it's going to be like FLARP, and she's probably right in one sense, but entirely wrong in another. You haven't told her about the fact that the game will save the world yet. Maybe you should reveal that to her soon. But then on second thought, it might be more fun to taunt her with hints.

It seems KK is trying to make another of his shit programs. You could almost laugh at how shitty his attempts at programming are. However, you also know that his level of shittiness can be dangerous. There's a reason you introduced him to ~ATH. The nubslurping fuckpod managed to destroy a computer using ^CAKE. Seriously, that takes some epic skill in suckage. At least with ~ATH you know that if he codes that badly it has a relative high chance of doing something useful and non destructive instead of what he originally intended. The language is made to be destructive, but you know there's some code out there that has so many errors that it practically does a double reach around and is both destructive and beneficial. You're hoping that Vantas might actually be a ~ATH genius, but you're not holding up much hope. You mean... an exploding computer in ^CAKE. Maybe he just has a negative IQ? Even though that phrase makes less sense than a wingbeast living in an underground lake eating only horrorterrors and playing the game that you have not yet compiled into completeness.

Wow. That was an amazing metaphor; you could be the best poet ever. Until you did a fucking acrobatic pirouette off the handle and started believing in miracles and praising the... juggalo cult goddess or some shit? You don't even know. 

You massage your neck. The stress must really be getting to you... and great, the voices are going back to being almost intelligible, but still distinctly unintelligible, instead of being background static. This is what you get for not concentrating on the code.

If it's not one thing, it's another. Isn't that just great. Maybe you should just switch projects. Leave this one unfinished forever. You are obviously crap at programming. You should just go get tips from Vantas and start drinking Faygo before it's too late. It's not like your skills can get any worse.

The food is done; you actually get up to go eat it away from the technology. Maybe then you'll be less inclined to think of how bad you are at programming. 

After you eat your food, you take your glasses off and lower yourself into the slime. It takes you forever to get to sleep, and even then you know it won't last long enough for you to actually feel rested.

* * *

The next day, because of course you had to go to bed during the middle of the night. You don't even have a schedule that resembles normal do you? 

You feel slightly better than you did yesterday, but still not that great.

You clean the slime off and get a fresh pair of clothes. Fuck, it looks like it's your last pair. Seems like you're actually going to have to do laundry today instead of anything worthwhile. You get a bowl and carefully scoop some mind honey into it using a curved utensil dedicated to such actions, making sure not to get any on your hands just in case you later inadvertently wipe your mouth with them and ingest some. You decide not to walk up the stairs today and lift yourself up them to the roof door with your psionics. You feed your lusus and get the usual unintelligible advice. You swear he used to be a bit more intelligent when you were a grub, but realize that you were more easily impressed at that age. At least he doesn't seem to be affected by the sun. It helps keep him safe during the day, you have some security grubs you programmed that come out at night, but they don't work well during the day. You take the bowl back into your cooking area and put it into the automatic cleaning device. 

You attempt to gather all your clothes into a laundry basket, knowing you're bound to miss some. You also know that you are bound to end up with a pair of matching socks instead of your usual mismatched ones. In fact, you are wearing one such pair today and it annoys the crap out of you. You can't wait to get some of those white socks clean. Before you leave, you grab your cheap grubtop and head over to the communal laundering area. 

Luckily it seems to be an off time for the laundry. You definitely prefer doing laundry during the day, it get's busy during the evening and the morning. There's only a brown blood and a green blood waiting for their clothes. You vaguely recognize them as trolls that you've seen here before. They obviously live in the nearby communal hives. The give you a glance and go back to what they were doing, one was reading a book and the other was... knitting? Well, who are you to judge. You are also here in the middle of the day doing laundry. You put your load into one of the many available wash machines. Once you set it up and paid, you find a seat as far away as your fellow late dayers as you can. You go on your grubtop and chat with everyone who messaged you. AA manages to confuse you with some new details. She really doesn't understand parts of the code that's encrypted in the ruins and manages to misinterpret some of it. Then again, you don't understand some of the symbolism so you guess it's fair. TZ blabbers on, not so subtly waiting for you to give some more detail on the game. You have some fun replying to her messages in a semi-serious manner without giving much detail. Once she asks directly for details you plan on giving her the big surprise of it saving the world. You think the mystery is part of what makes her so interested. KK is annoyed as usual and you are just hurling awesome insults towards him, but you think the conversation might be taking a turning point into weird again. You'll just have to see who caves first and asks about deleting the logs and never mentioning it again. You're in a good mood right now and KK seems to be getting pretty flustered, so you think he'll probably cave, but if this continues much longer you're going to have to do it. You have a reputation as a badass programmer to keep up and this conversation would really ruin it.

Once your machine is done, you go to get your laundry to put it in the other machine to dry. When you do so you notice that the machine you were using was slowly leaking water onto the floor. The communal laundering area's rules state that you have to clean it up and your good mood is ruined. You place your laundry into a drying machine and start it up. Then you go to the closet area to grab a mop, a water containment device, and a couple towels.

You double check that your grub top is still on your chair. It is. The other trolls glance up as you close the closet. The brown blood left, but the green blood is still here reading her book and a blue blood seems to have arrived when you weren't paying attention. She seems to be playing a video game. Neither of them pays too much attention to you, which is a good sign. You don't remember if either of them is higher in the hemospectrum, but it's better to be cautious than dead. You clean up the mess and place the supplies back in the closet. Putting the dirty towels into a bin for cleaning. You return to your grubtop and explore the internet at your leisure. There's no free wireless in the communal laundry area, but you have a plan that allows you to access the internet everywhere. Definitely worth the price. 

Before you're laundry is done you glance up to see a red blood who looks vaguely familiar come in and sit down. He chose a seat uncomfortably close to you. In fact, it was the one right next to yours. You think he's the one who keeps hitting on you when you do laundry at the same time. But your laundry is done anyways, so you just give him a dirty, platonic glare before getting up to gather your clothes.

Once you get back into your hive you go back to coding the same thing you were last night. You check over the possible areas for a mistake and find a single error at a higher level. You mixed up a variable name. Figures. Then, when looking at the area of code you were programming when you gave up, you realize that the command didn't even make sense and that the variable error wasn't even affecting that bit of code at all. Damn. That just makes you feel like more of a moron. You realize that most trolls wouldn't be able to do this at all, but you figure that just goes to show the state of society more than your own intelligence.

Well, now you know what your problem was, you forgot to consider that one case. But then what if this happens? It's unlikely but possible. But that other thing can't be less than zero, so you might get some overflow. You should probably put an error in that case and make it impossible to get to that... then hmm...

You're back into the code; the physical world seems to fade around you. The voices go back into a somewhat disturbing static. All you care about for the moment is logic and how you can use it to make the computer do what you want it to do.

**Author's Note:**

> I am definitely receptive to critique. This is the first fic I've posted online in years and the first fic I've posted on this site (and also, the first complete fic I've written in years). Orphaned because I like anonymity?


End file.
